Zyklon-B Cannister Label

Authors

Object ID

2015.2.13

Object Name

Label

Files

Content Warning

The Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection consists of images, documents, and artifacts related to the Holocaust. The collection contains materials that depict a number of topics that may be difficult for viewers to engage with, including: antisemitic descriptions, caricatures, and representation of Jewish people; Nazi imagery and ideology; descriptions and images of German ghettos; graphic images of the violence of the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel. For more information, see our policy page.

Description

Front: Tan paper with text in black, white and red. Includes skull and crossbones in upper left corner, a red shield with white design in lower left, and a black circular hand stamp on right edge. Zyklon B was a pesticide used in Nazi death camps to exterminate Jews through vaporizing pellets in shower chambers.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

A hydrogen cyanide product produced by Degesch, Zyklon-B had originally been used as a pesticide. By summer of 1941, the Nazis were experimenting with it on Soviet POWs, and discovered that the vaporizing pellets were an effective means of gassing Jews. Degesch was a subsidiary of I.G. Farben which, along with Tesch and Stabenow, profited by supplying the SS with Zyklon-B. By pouring the pellets through rooftop openings on the gas chambers, thus exposing them to air, a lethal gas was produced as an effective means to murder the victims. Nazis murdered more than one million Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. Bruno Tesch, who developed the form of this product for use in canisters, was executed after the war for advising the SS on Zyklon-B's use on humans.

Dimensions

4 1/2 x 6 3/4"

Keywords

Skull and crossbones, Nazi seal, stamp, hydrogen cyanide, Degesch, Zyklon B, I.G. Farben, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Zyklon B Cannister, Bruno Tesch

Subcollection

Concentration

Recommended Citation

"Zyklon-B Cannister Label" (2015). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2015.2.13.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/137